I don't think I made a claim that SV (or anyone) is an objective arbiter of truth.

I said:

1) At some point, if you allow a view to be expressed on your platform, you become somewhat implicated in that view spreading.

2) I believe (and I think FB believes) that the views these people promote are harmeful.

Now, should we trust Facebook? No! Facebook has banned many people and groups for far less than these people were banned. The reason Facebook is pushing this news so hard is that they have been letting things slide again and again because these people were prominent figures (see also how Twitter keeps not banning trump despite his many threats of violence).

I am not the author of the parent comment that you're replying to, but I appreciate your civil reply in a flamebait-y thread.

That said, his point seems to be that FB is banning e.g. Farrakhan without making any effort at disproving Farrakhan's claims, and furthermore that many of the commenters in this thread are similarly dismissive of Farrakhan's claims without offering anything resembling a good-faith disproof of those claims.

(Note that the parent and I are not making any statement about Farrakhan's correctness or incorrectness, but are instead merely noting the widespread absence of proofs about this correctness).

Personally I know essentially nothing about Farrakhan and his claims, but I like to believe that I can think critically enough to evaluate his claims on their merits, and do not need to be "protected" from hearing them by Facebook or anyone else. I (and perhaps the parent poster) would like to participate in an agora of ideas where everyone is welcome to promulgate his claims, no matter how allegedly outlandish, and the strongest ideas will win on their merits. Contrast this to a situation wherein the winning ideas win because their rivals are excluded from the agora.

Of course I don't mean this just about Farrakhan. Similarly, I have never read the Protocols of Zion, which are mentioned several times elsewhere in this thread, and I have no clue whether they are related to a Jewish conspiracy for world domination etc. But many commenters here are asserting claims about the Protocols, without offering any attempt at a proof beyond a link to Wikipedia, which personally I find very unconvincing as a matter of principle, on this and any other topic.

In general I am not convinced by assertions/bannings, and prefer evidence.

Facebook is a corporation and their website is private property. You have no free speech.

I would argue that when a website get enough users, it should be seen as a government. The number is as ill-defined as “how many grains of sand makes a heap”, but FB is now defining the social interactions of more people than the largest single nation state.

On the other paw, I don’t believe in absolute freedom of speech, because the very power which makes the freedom worth having also enables it to cause harm. I think the quote “If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him“ still applies today.

I wish I had a solution to that rather than just a vague feeling. Vague inexpressible feelings are part of the problem.

Do you mean it should be seen as a public space?

I agree there is an argument for regulating large for-profit social media sites as a public utilities... but I can't see how they are "a government" in and of themselves.

Not quite. I mean that it has rules of behaviour, it hires people to enforce those rules, it has strategic objectives and engages in world events, and is an economic force just above the middle of the IMF 2018 list, roughly equivalent to Slovenia (assuming GDP ~= revenue), or North Dakota if prefer to compare against a state of the USA.

Facebook is not a nation, despite all that, but not all government are national governments and I think it counts as a kind of government.

> I would argue that when a website get enough users, it should be seen as a government

That's absurd. It's a website not a government; nobody is forcing you to use facebook, if you dislike how they operate their website don't use it.

I’m British. Nobody’s forcing me to use the British government, as evidenced by the fact I left the country with no intention to return. (Some people have even given up their citizenship). Sure, there are things that makes it hard to do, but that’s true for leaving FB too.

That's an absurd comparison. It's a website not a country.

So can they stop acting like they censor equally across the ideological/political spectrum? It's fine that they have an agenda, but the corporate lawyer speak after events like this, feigning equal censorship, is so disingenuous (and I can't stand one minute of Jones or Yiannopoulos).

Finally somebody gets it!!!! This is refreshing!

Rest assured many people do get it, but the mob rolls on. Power is one hell of a drug.

>What is it that blesses SV neo-something-or-other as the one true faction that has finally discovered the objective truth?

They are self-anointed by nature of being de facto gate keepers of the global information flow.

Similar to how the Church used to be the gatekeepers of information, and were compelled to silence "blasphemous" ideas that they didn't like.

They aren't self-anointed. We anointed them by using their platform. They're only gatekeepers because we user keeping choosing to walk through their gate instead of choosing any of the many other paths onto the Internet.

>They aren't self-anointed. We anointed them by using their platform

Nahhh, it's way more nuanced than that. They started as user friendly simple services with little to no purposeful mass censorship. Then the user base grew into the billions effectively creating captive audience due to the network effect. Then they became increasingly user hostile (i.e. switching from chronological timeline to a psychologically manipulative news feed) and got into the business of political mass censorship and electioneering; like a bait and switch.